The Definitive Content Marketing Formula

Content Marketing has been remarkably exposed over marketers’ activities the last couple of years. However, companies seem to struggle upon the development of profitable content marketing strategies. That specific kind of content which takes into account both users and search engines in order to build high rankings in the search engine result pages and engage buyers with the brand. In my previous post regarding the fundamentals of content marketing I attributed a definitive definition to content marketing.
Content marketing could be defined as a pull rather than push marketing process that resides on owned or earned media which makes people aware of how to solve their problems with ultimate goal to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience.”
It is worth saying that the content marketing community has already embraced the social part of this field and shares valuable blog posts and online articles, so everybody can find useful information about strategies and tactics. On the other hand, there are only a few blog posts which have developed a solid concept of the content marketing process in respect to Search Engine Optimization. Throughout this post and based on a content marketing research (questionnaire) that I have personally conducted in the last couple of months I will propound a definitive formula of the content marketing process that online marketers, who deal with content marketing and search engine optimization, should adopt.
Particularly, in this research e-retailers who struggle to find ways to improve their search organic visibility by developing content marketing strategies is the major focus. However, the formula expects to carry invaluable advantages to all B2C companies and to online marketers dealing with the B2C part of online marketing.

I call this formula “Optimized Content Marketing & SEO Formula”, and it is an eight steps process, which assists to develop a new content marketing campaign from the scratch. Now it is time to get into the formula, characteristics and its individual steps.

Step 1. Research Customer Segments

Getting started from the very first step – Research Customer Segments – online marketers initially have to identify and segment the audience. By saying audience I refer to the existed customers and potentials buyers the company is interested to deal with. Developing buyer personas would be an easy way of addressing the various customer preferences into consolidated buyer personalities. Then, they should address their pain points as well as their information needs during the buying cycle. Particularly, questions like “what they care about, or what are their characteristics” could successfully drive research towards the right identification of customer segments. Of course, such actions require strong efforts and expertise in order to encircle the various segments, personas and their pain points respectively.

Here is a well-written and straightforward guide on how to build personas that they reflect their needs into search queries. Use the same guide for the fourth step – Keyword Research – as well.

Step 2. Determine Objectives

In the second step, communication objectives have to be determined according to brand’s needs. There is a framework called S.M.A.R.T. which helps objectives to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. It is highly significant for marketers to develop SMART objectives and not illusions that can effectively impress the marketing manager or even the CEO, however cannot be accomplished at the end of the day. Personally, I find the framework very useful so I refer you to a source where you can find more information.

Step 3. Identify Topic and Message

Next step in the formula is the topic and message identification which should be developed with definitive aim to attract, provide with a solution, and finally engage the audience with the brand. Topic and message together should educate, entertain and enthrall in order to build relationships and trust. At the same time it can serve as a company’s reflection and assist in promoting the products and services related to the brand. Relevant and valuable content is able to reach out a targeted audience and promote a brand’s solutions regarding on what customers are searching for, and therefore promote the company’s commodities. Customer’s buying cycle seems to be a very important factor that marketers should take into account as well, as different needs expressed in different times by the buyers.

In the particular case of e-retailers, online marketing practitioners seem to prefer segmented content according to the website’s product or service categories as the most appropriate solution.  The translation of the buyer persona, characteristics and the stage of buying cycle into specific content can effectively be attractive and compelling at the same time.

Step 4. Keyword Research

Then, the keyword research is expected to be undertaken. It is, indeed, a painful process as it includes competitive analysis from keywords perspective, and SEO keyword research and examination of key phrases relevant to the buying cycle for the lure of qualitative audience. Particular interest should be attributed in the way the specified targeted audience is likely to search in the search engines. How would the targeted customers articulate their needs in terms of keywords? The queries used by your targeted audience should be used as keywords inside the content in order to drive high volumes of relevant audience into the buying process. Do not forget to use the guide from the first step, Research Customer Segments.

Step 5. Specify Content Marketing Forms

Having transferred in the second half of the framework, online marketers should identify which are the most suitable content marketing forms for manipulation to form their already budding content. The various forms of encapsulating the needs into rich content forms include online articles, blog posts, content creation, customer reviews, digital newsletters, eBooks/whitepapers, emails, images and info-graphics, widgets, Micro-sites, mobile applications, mobile content, news release, surveys, social content, videos, seminars and many others.

The findings from the empirical research recommend that blog posts, customer reviews and social content are the most significant forms for e-retailing websites in order to gain the best results in the search engine battlefield.

Step 6. Content Creation

Therefore, the next step is to tie together the message identified back in the third step and the content form from the previous step. Once again, the final content should be a piece of art, reaching the buyer when and where exactly he/she needs it. Content relevant to what the organisation merchandises which aims to educate people, makes buyers aware about the brand in order to like it and trust it; significant elements for an organisation to achieve customer acquisition.

Online marketers responded to the research specified that professional writing, original content, custom content, and content written for SEO purposes are the most important elements taking under consideration. So try to keep an eye on what you consider as educative and compelling content as readers do not want to come across sloppy content that seems effortless and too branded.

Step 7. Content Promotion

Next in the process comes the promotion of the content. Social media Marketing and Influencer Marketing could play a critical role for achieving this aim. Influencer marketing could help brands to connect with social media influencers that distribute brand-friendly content which is shared by others. Therefore, they could be able to share their content across the web and reach millions of consumers.

There are several social media platforms available to be utilised for the delivery of the content to audiences. Among the several social media platforms online marketers responded that Facebook is the most effective solution for e-retailers, and they rank Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest next in the list. Of course, the option is more or less depending on the e-retailer’s nature.

Joe Pulizzi from Content Marketing Institute has written a post regarding 47 Social Media tools for Content Marketers.

Step 8. Measure Results

The measurement of the efforts through particular KPI’s is the final step. Once again, every content marketing effort should be measured in order to identify the degree of success and thus the required changes for improvement. There are several KPI’s that online marketers could use to measure the impact of content. More or less, the metrics depend on the content marketing objectives and should be run in parallel with them. Among these metrics are: web traffic, views / downloads, lead quality, lead quantity, sales / revenue, inquires, customer feedback, search ranking’s performance, social media engagement, inbound links and others.

Based on the key performance indicators online marketers voted for the sales/revenue, the web traffic, the quality, and the customer feedback as the strongest metrics in order to measure the content’s performance of e-retailers. 

Repetition of the Process

Consequently, based on the performance of the content marketing efforts continuous optimization should be attributed to each individual step. Therefore, after the measurement of the results and the identification of the issues, a new cycle of the same process should be repeated getting started from the identification of a new topic and/or message for promotion.

Conclusion

As a result, given the fact that this formula can effectively match to the online marketer’s expectations in order to build successful content marketing strategies, the overall rationale of this process can be absolutely complied with their needs. A combination of content marketing and search engine optimization tactics, all applied to this formula can fill the gap and improve the search organic visibility of particularly e-retailing websites. However, I want again to stress out the need of focusing both to the general image of the process and to each individual step separately, as both of them are equally important for the development of successful content marketing campaigns.

What do you think?

Do you think that such a formula would reflect the content marketing needs of a B2C company into effective and profitable campaigns? I would love to hear your comments, questions, and suggestions in the comments below. I pledge to respond to everyone.

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Posterous will turn off on April 30

Posterous launched in 2008. Our mission was to make it easier to share photos and connect with your social networks. Since joining Twitter almost one year ago, we’ve been able to continue that journey, building features to help you discover and share what’s happening in the world – on an even larger scale.
On April 30th, we will turn off posterous.com and our mobile apps in order to focus 100% of our efforts on Twitter. This means that as of April 30, Posterous Spaces will no longer be available either to view or to edit.
Right now and over the next couple months until April 30th, you can download all of your Posterous Spaces including your photos, videos, and documents. 
Here are the steps:

1. Go to http://posterous.com/#backup.
2. Click to request a backup of your Space by clicking “Request Backup” next to your Space name.
3. When your backup is ready, you'll receive an email.
4. Return to http://posterous.com/#backup to download a .zip file.

If you want to move your site to another service, WordPress and Squarespace offer importers that can move all of your content over to either service. Just remember: you need to back up your Spaces by April 30.
We’d like to thank the millions of Posterous users who have supported us on our incredible journey. We hope to provide you with as easy a transition as possible, and look forward to seeing you on Twitter. Thank you.
Sachin Agarwal
Founder and CEO

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Spamming Your Way to Visibility with User-Generated Pages

“Can you name a city in New Jersey that doesn’t have an E in its name? It’s not easy…” So say the multitude of recent Facebook posts that have inundated the feed of pretty much everyone on Facebook.
It’s easy, and it’s so simple that even Great Aunt Matilda could comment “Brick” or “Lodi” and feel pleased with herself that she accomplished something that was claimed to be “not easy”.
Why are these posts showing up? It’s all to do with Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm.
The median reach of a Facebook article is said to be around 16 percent – in other words only 16 percent of your followers will see your average Facebook posts in their news feed. How can you increase that? By increasing your level of engagement with your followers.
How can you increase your level of engagement? By putting out stupid inane questions that the lowest possible denominator (sorry Great Aunt Matilda) can easily answer.
Once they’ve responded, there’s a greater chance that future posts from the site posting the inane posts will show up in their news feed, thus increasing their reach.
This is far and away from being the first instance of this attempt at manipulation on Facebook. Last year there was a spate of “write some specific word in the comments and you’ll be amazed at what happens” (SPOILER: What happens is nothing apart from their next posts perhaps showing up in the feed of Great Aunt Matilda, et al). …and let’s not forget the “How many squares do you see in this picture?” image that you couldn’t avoid every time you logged on for about a month or so.
So is there a solution beyond ignoring them? Well, if enough people flag them as spam, then perhaps Facebook will look into them, beyond that it’s a matter of increasing awareness of this type of trick.

SEO and Spam

Of course spammy tactics and techniques aren’t simply a Facebook issue, Twitter has its share of trend hackers, those who follow the trends and automatically tweet out links to their debt consolidation program, pharmaceuticals, or whatever they’re selling attached to the hottest hashtag.
With SEO, there are many tactics that go against the grain, but the one I’m going to focus on here that is roughly equivalent to the inane Facebook posts issue is that of creating spammy pages on legitimate sites.
These pages could be user profiles, or UGC pages if the site permits it. These are low quality pages that shouldn’t, in a post Panda world rank for anything, but in some cases they still do, so they keep trying.
At least with these, there is a mechanism to get them removed if you see them ranking in the search engines. Simply fill out the Google spam report and let them deal with it.
You can always report them to the site owner as well, as they may not be aware of the extent of their issue. If they understand that Google detecting a large quantity of spam on their site can impact the ability of their site to rank for terms that they probably, legitimately should be competing for.
For example, in the image to the left you can see links to a free (illegal) stream for the new “Die Hard” movie. Hardly the type of content you’d expect to see on a wedding site.
It can be difficult for a successful site that allows users to create pages to keep an eye on every page created. On site I was working with had a slew of link heavy UGC pages that were linking over to products that had absolutely nothing to do with that site. The dev team killed all of those pages.
A year later I note that several of them are back in operation. Not exactly the same as they were, as the dev team had placed checks and balances on the site to trap these type of pages based on common patterns. The spammers obviously noticed that and worked to find out a way back onto the site.
Regardless of the medium, there’ll always be spammers, people trying to work their way around the system, looking for the quick buck. Sure, they’ll get smacked down from time to time, but they keep coming back.
Primarily it’s up to the search engines, the social networks, and the site owners to prevent it as much as they can, but flagging spam where you can will at least give them a hand in identifying this web junk.

What Should a Responsible Marketer Do?

Don’t do what Johnny Spammer does. If it looks like spam, feels like spam and smells like spam, guess what? Yep, it’s spam.
If you’re working with a site that relies on this type of tactic trickery in order to survive, then perhaps you need to reevaluate why you’re working with that site, because quite frankly it’s a short term strategy, as you’re constantly wondering when the next Panda, Penguin, or Facebook smackdown will come around the corner and kill your site dead in the water. Plus it just makes your brand look cheap and tacky.
Let me finish with one question for you, it’s a hard one: Name a site without an E in the domain that’s going to be able to spam like this long term and get away with it?

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7 Ways to Get More Organic Search Clicks

Image via CrunchBase

Last month we talked about offsite engagement for awareness, appearing at the right point in a consumer's thought process, introducing a brand as a topic expert and potential option.
The next step along the route to revenue looks at the "Consideration" phase where engagement – as well as other factors – can affect click-through rates (CTR) in search results, an oft overlooked, and underrated metric in the world of SEO.
First a caveat! CTR studies are both fun and farcical. When no two search results are the same, predicting the percentage of click-throughs in certain positions, and leveraging that as a prognostication of actual traffic can, at best, provide directional data and, at worst, leave clients unhappy when targets fall short.

What Can SEO Affect in the SERP?

• When: This component refers to the searches that return your site (or your client's site) as a relevant result. Through query research SEO practitioners can affect when their site appears in the SERP. In an earlier article I covered an intent-based approach that leverages consumer behavior data throughout the decision journey to help marketers drive content development and search query relevance.
• Where: This component refers to your websites' placement and rank within the SERP. The wherecomponent relies on core optimization, the site's ability to be properly indexed and cataloged, and whether its content is relevant to the user query. If you're a savvy SEO you understand the core concepts of the art and science; Platform/architecture, content relevance, offsite authority building, onsite engagement and social signals. (Rinse and repeat!)
• What: This component refers to the type of result that appears for a specific query. For instance, does the search engine present universal, local, news or other non-traditional results? Obviously, sites will only rank and appear for media specific queries if they have produced, optimized and distributed that specific type of content on their site and / or across various channels. Examples include; social platform profiles, YouTube videos, Google+ Local profiles, LinkedIn, owned images and / or news. SEO's can influence both the existence and optimization of these kinds of assets.
• How: This component is the key to of SERP engagement. Below we'll dig a little deeper into how the results look, their familiarity, clickability and overall relevance to the search query.
•  
•  

The how can manifest in a number of different ways, i.e.:

Markup Authorship Title Snippet Bolding Link Breadcrumbs

Sitelinks Images Videos News Social signals Local Mobile

Although (unfortunately for SEO) SERP display is dependent on search engine whim, we can affect - at least in today's SERP - some of these elements and positively impact click through rates.
Take a look at the following example for the query [perfect santa monica beach hotel]:

Let's intelligently assume the user has decided on location (Santa Monica), near the beach, and used the modifier "perfect", which means they're looking for some qualifier that this isn't a horrible hotel.
Google maps the query to Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel (the official name). Loews' site appears in the second organic position and in a three-pack of local results. Not too bad!
Recent studies have shown users spend an average 14.7 seconds looking at the organic search results - with 8-15 results on a results page, that's about 2 seconds per listing to grab attention.

How Can Your Result Stand Out?

Way back in sixth position is TripAdvisor, a travel review site that does a great job in doing exactly that; addressing the user's intent, capturing attention, and inspiring the click.
Here are a few strategies to call out your result in the SERP:
Rich Snippets markup provide the ratings, reviews count, and price range. Listing the full name of the hotel as the first part of the title tag and meta snippet creates a bold repetition of the original query, adding in some dynamic insertion into the snippet also grabs a users attention - "See 281 candid photos"! Note: Using the word "see" as the call to action, underscores a human curiosity to take a peek at something... candid? (A little naughty perhaps... I must see those!).
Add in the brand recognition of TripAdvisor, and I'd be almost certain the click through rates for this query would be skewed towards the listing in position #6 over standard CTR analysis (This is a great CTR analysis of different types of query from SEOMoz).
Richer Results. For queries that Google believes warrant richer results, the "Search Everywhere Optimization" approach outlined in last month's article holds true. Rich media can almost always result in better engagement and garner more user clicks than static text links. Users posing questions as search queries generally have Google mapping to "how to" videos or images.
Note: This kind of search intent can be capture through the creation of specific question based content. (see examples below)

Video!	Images! Authorship!

Notice how different questions - action vs. activity - can garner different media results.
Google knows that questions around action-based topics are probably better satisfied by video, whereas activity-based topics, are probably better served by images and articles.
Google doesn't inherently know this, but leverages it's massive data set of user behavior (such as clicks/dwell rates), human reviewers and semantic interpretation of content to connect search intent to relevant content/media types.
The example on the right, also includes an Authorship SERP element, a necessity for experts and expert wannabes to ensure articles pull image and author information into the results - a very engaging element!

How to Get People to Engage (Click)

1. Build a brand! Last time we talked about building off-site awareness. Leveraging offsite promotions, creating associations and affiliations can inspire users to click through when they see your name (and Google loves brands!)
2. Pay attention to the title tag and meta description of your page. Do they tell enough of a story about what users will get from a click, and is it differentiated from your competition (if you aren't doing research in the SERP by actually searching on your "money queries," then you don't deserve the click!)
3. Core optimization is key. Not just around on page and in code tag optimization. Look at your site structure, internal linking and how people are navigating your site to help create breadcrumbs in your search results (look at the TripAdvisor example above).
4. Are you using rich snippets? Google will like you more if you do... they even give you the tools to make it easier to see how well you're doing! Markup your data!
5. Authorship is a buzzword, but an important one! Google tells you how, and I suggest you run – don't walk – to implement... and then write some great content!
6. Think multimedia! Especially around explanations of products, services or expertise. Create video and image assets, tag them, caption them, *optimize* them and promote them!
7. Review the SERP! Having a great looking result is one thing, having the best looking result can bring you more and better traffic. Review often. Tweak. Test. Engage!

Although this article can only scratch the surface of SERP engagement, ask yourself the when, where, what and how.

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